Comment from Dhaka by “eishob-dinratri”
Night in Dhaka. ALl day, traffic snarled, burning cars, protests spreading to BUET, JNU. In late afternoon, the Army man who instigated the brawl removed by army command. Then in evening, the bombshell– Army removed from DU campus. But students now have 5 demands, including personal apology from Army Chief.

I celebrate student activism, I salute student politics, I applaud their brave role in ousting Ayub/Yahya, Ershad. But I hesitate to celebrate them now. We are in very dangerous, unstable & uncertain times, and we are all wondering what the exit strategy is. For Army, for CTG, and most importantly, for us. For Bangladesh. Because if protests oust the CTG, then what? What comes in its place? I worry constantly about what will fill that dangerous vacuum.

Businesspeople I spoke to today are very worried, that this will indicate a return to the violent anarchy of the last one year. But business is not a fan of CTG/Army either. I was talking to an importer yesterday and he was talking about how the economy has come to a standstill by the misguided policies of the Army/CTG. We all cheered their anti-corruption campaign (who does not love the sight of boner raja in shackles, and tareq in handcuffs), but because they went after everyone (and yet, NOT everyone– we know who is still out and about), and because the tenor has been so against all business (”raghob bowal ebong chunoputi dhorbo”) business is terrified. Consider the op-ed in DS a few days ago “A Business Unfriendly Government.” That says it all. No one is opening LCs for fear of investigation. Imports have plummeted, prices are shooting through the roof. Now that they have unleashed economic forces they do not understand, the Army is trying to do rationing and open special shops. Farhad Mazhar wrote sarcastically (he has his own agenda, more on that later) “Is the army now going to be opening muudi’r dokan? is this their role?”.

A banker at HSBC said money len-den has frozen because people are afraid to buy anything expensive (you may say they should not do wasteful consumption, but that is sepaate debate) and get targeted by joint forces. People are afraid to keep money in the bank because a swollen bank account will generate a letter from Dudok. The economy is going into slow-motion nosedive and the Army has no idea how to revive it.

In desperation, this gov’t has become the first IN THE WORLD to sign the IMF’s No Loan Advisory Agreement. Something IMF has tried to get weak African nations to sign for a year, and not one has agreed. But weak, compliant Bangladesh has. Under an unelected government.

In this situation, one scenario is that we get to Dec ‘08 and get elections under a weaker BNP and AL, sans Hasina/Khaleda (sans because that is Army’s only safety guarantee). Perhaps BNP/AL form a coalition govt because neither has enough seats. (Jamaat is wild card).

The students clearly have genuine, pent-up resentment towards Army. I am sure that played a huge part in things spiralling out of control in 24 hours. All this under a state of emergency. And the Army knows that if there is a mass uprising they will be helpless. They will have to say, as Ershad’s C-in-C said in 1991, “Sir, I cannot fire on my own people.”

But Army also knows ones thing is different now– the vast spread of private universities, which has removed a huge portion of student population from the centers of politicization. This is either a good thing (remembering session jam, cadre action, chadabaji) or a bad thing (remembering all the times that students have protested before anyone else dared). All depends on where you sit.

Showing the same deft light touch that it has shown since 1981, BTV is choosing just this very moment to premiere a music video with a horrendously bad flood song (”AMADER SOBAIKE LORTE HOBE” or something) with reams of gratuitous footage of Moeen U Ahmed and Mainul Hossein giving flood relief. Dear BTV, you just don’t get it.

But now what?

The more scared the Army gets, the more dangerous it is. From what I have seen so far, Moeen U Ahmed seems at least to be an honest man (that is his rep). But if things don’t go well, he could easily get toppled by the hotheaded juniors. Imagine: things are spinning out of control, Moeen U refuses to declare martial law, and he is overthrown by an ambitious General. Imagine that General is like Zia-ul-Huq, using Islam as his baton. Will that be the Bangladesh we wanted?

Although there is no predicting where histories will end up, I think a lot of France. The black and arab youth of the ghettos rose up and burned half the cities, and brought all of France to a standstill. As a dorect result of this, because of the fear that violence unleashed (tinged with race paranoia, at which the French excel), Nicolas Sarkozy (who had called the rioters “scum”) was elected. All commentators say that he catapulted to national prominence based on his response to the riots. But why did black/arab youth not get what they wanted? Because it was spontaneous violence with no leaders, no spokesperson, no demands and no political party. All they could shout at the cameras was ‘cops out’. So they did not get that demand, nor did they translate the riots into anything meaningful (other than some window dressing of visible minority appointments).

Is it revolutionary violence if it ends up empowering the state?

One an instinctive level, when I see the footage of police chasing students, with my inherent Bangali suspicion of state/police (and our history), I cheer. Students heros, Police villains. Students heros, Army villain. Army hotao, Police Bhag.

But when I talk to the businessman who says if things continue like this, “all industries will collapse”, I shiver with fear. Jute, our golden jute, which was our biggest example of how Pakistan was sucking our revenue dry, that Jute has collapsed. It is so easy to destroy things.

I don’t know which side to cheer. I can find no heroes. Only losers, and the biggest one is our country.